Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Wild Horses Are Terrible for the West

North America’s wild horses are the feral descendants of animals brought by Europeans in the past few hundred years. Biologically speaking, this is the blink of an eye, far too short a time for horses to be considered native. More importantly, that’s much too short for native North American plants and animals to adapt to the pressures of coexistence.

Grasslands are protected by “biotic crusts” that consist of loose soil held together by tiny cyanobacteria, lichens, mosses, and green algae. They serve as a fragile glue that keeps desert soils from being washed or blown away. But these crusts are pulverized by horses, leading to poor water absorption, reduced fertility, and long-lasting environmental damage. Grasslands are disappearing as wild horse hooves crush biotic crusts, encouraging erosion that leaves wide swaths permanently degraded, replaced with barren rock.

Furthermore, wild horses compete with native grazers (as well as
cattle) for limited forage and water. As wild horse populations surge
past the 47,000 now thundering across 31.6 million acres of public land,
they threaten the survival of native species, exacerbating the impacts
of climate change and habitat fragmentation.

Because our culture values them, wild horses have benefited from
protection and reprieves from culling that would have been employed for
virtually any other destructive animal, native or introduced. Because
the U.S. Forest Service’s proposal to capture some of the Salt River
herd was met with public outcry, plans were scrapped—even though the
herd is degrading a fragile and rare desert oasis. The protesters,
unsatisfied visiting the 9.2 million domestic horses across the United
States, insisted that retaining this wild herd at full strength in a
wildlife refuge was ethically and aesthetically justified, simply based
on their love of horses, despite the environmental costs.

In just the past four years, wild horse and burro management has cost
U.S. taxpayers more than $291 million, including $49 million annually
to care for 46,000 captured feral horses in off-range corals. This
annual budget is almost 10 times bigger than budgets allotted to save
many endangered species; managing wild horses is sapping agency
resources, directly and indirectly driving native species to extinction.

1 comment:

drjohn
said...

The government is now the largest mismanagers of livestock in America. With over 100,000 horses under their control, I should say out of control, this program is rapidly, if it hasn't already, cost more tax payer money than will ever be recoveredThis article accurately states the problem, however the horse kissers do not want to read about what is happening to the land. Each horse consumes 10% of its weight in forage on a daily basis and drinks a correspondingly amount of water. It also excretes several pounds of manure which is a habitat for parasites which continually plague the animals. Also the horse kissers think the sanctuarys and the open range is some sort of a nirvana for these animals. It isn't . Every horse there will die mostly from cumulative effects and in many cases the death will take several days of being down and floundering, unable to get up. Figure this, if as stated there were 40 million bison in this country as a result of uncontrolled reproduction the horses could be doing the same thing. To many horses. As has been stated a child dies every five seconds from malnutrition and sickness, which go hand in hand, Each 1000 pound horse could supply 3200 cans of safe and highly nutritious food to these dying children. My answer to the problem is a can of Mustang Stew.